1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an image forming system for saving image data of an image of a read document and using the saved image data. The invention also relates to a method and a program for saving image data of a read document. The invention further relates to an image reading device and an image reading system for reading a document image to obtain image data.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an image forming apparatus, such as a composite machine, having copying and scanning functions reads a document (for example, letter, image, or photo). When provided with a storage device such as a hard disc, the image forming apparatus can save read image data. Moreover, serving as a device that reads a document to obtain image data is a scanner. Saving image data by using such devices permits repeatedly printing the image data, transmitting the image data to a PC connected to the network, and transmitting the image data by facsimile.
JP-A-No. 2006-211205 discloses an image forming apparatus that saves image data of a read document. More specifically, described therein is an image forming apparatus which is provided with a box saving function of storing into a storage part a letter read by a scanning part, a saved letter usage function, and a saved letter delete function, and which has, for each of letters saved in a box, storage means adapted to hold a management table storing management information and an input part for inputting a user ID.
Here, conventionally in a composite machine or the like, to save image data of a read document, in view of achieving direct outputting such as printing, image data has been saved after subjected to image processing. For example, when zoom processing such as enlargement or reduction processing is set upon image data reading, the image data has been saved after subjected to image processing for zoom processing. Moreover, for example, when density is set upon image data reading, the image data has been saved after image processing for density conversion was performed on the image data of a read document. Further, for the purpose of reducing the data volume of image data, image processing for compressing the image data of a document has been sometimes performed.
In such image data saving, no problem is involved in directly printing the image data. However, performing additional image processing on image data that has been saved after subjected to image processing results in image quality deterioration and loss of document reproducibility and faithfulness. That is, saving image data after subjecting it to image processing, as has been conventionally practiced, poses a problem of serious loss of image data reusability. Thus, even image forming apparatuses have been introduced which prohibit additional image processing from being performed on saved image data.
The invention described in JP-A-No. 2006-211205 does not present a solution for such a problem with the reusability of saved image data. Actually, for the image data saving, it is only described that image data is saved into a HDD (paragraphs [0012], [0018], etc. of JP-A-No. 2006-211205).